Reusing Semantics in Visual Editors: A Case for Reference Attribute Grammars

Summary, in English

The semantic formalism reference attribute grammars (RAGs) allows graphs to be superimposed on abstract syntax trees. This paper investigates how RAGs can be used to model visual languages, with a case study of a control language that also has a textual syntax. The language contains blocks on which a total execution order is defined based on connections and layout information. One strength of RAGs is reusability, and we demonstrate this by reusing the definition of the execution order in the visual editor to provide semantic feedback to the user.

• Author: Niklas Fors; Görel Hedin
• Department/s: Department of Computer Science; ELLIIT: the Linköping-Lund initiative on IT and mobile communication; eSSENCE: The e-Science Collaboration; Software Development and Environments
• Publishing year: 2013
• Language: English
• Publication/Series: Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques
• Volume: 58
• Links: http://journal.ub.tu-berlin.de/eceasst/article/view/845
• Document type: Conference paper
• Publisher: Electronic Communications of the EASST
• Topic: Computer Science
• Conference name: Graph Transformation and Visual Modeling Techniques (GT-VMT), 2013
• Conference date: 2013-03-23 - 2013-03-24
• Conference place: Rome, Italy
• Status: Published
• Project: ELLIIT LU P05: Scalable Language Tools for Cyber-Physical Systems
• Research group: LUCAS
• ISBN/ISSN/Other: ISSN: 1863-2122